Archives | IndieWire

A symphony in three movements:
THINGS SUCH AS:
A Mediterranean cruise. Numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday…
OUR EUROPE:
At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
OUR HUMANITIES:
Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona. [Synopsis courtesy of uniFrance]

Contempt / Le Mépris is a film about filmmaking. Godard’s Masterfully staged melodrama tells of a woman’s love for a middle-class lifestyle and how a film maker must buy it for her while at the same time working as a writer for the film ‘The Odyssey’ to be directed by Fritz Lang.

“Histoire(s) du cinema” is an unique piece of art : you could see it as an essay about cinema, art and history, as well as a self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. “Moments choisis des histoire(s) du cinéma”, edited in 2004, is a “best of” and a summary of every other episodes.

There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured cinema would never be the same.

A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60.

13 Europeans directors explore the theme of Sarajevo and what this city represents in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo incarnates today in Europe. From different generations and origins, these eminent filmmakers offer many singular styles and visions.
François Schuiten, famous Belgian comic book artist (Cities of the Fantastic) imagined animated cartoon links in between these films, a metaphoric transposition in his graphically luxuriant world of the emblematic bridges of the city of Sarajevo. [Synopsis courtesy of Cannes Film Festival]

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday… Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

The idea is simple:
A married woman and a single man meet.
They love, they argue, fists fly.
A dog strays between town and country.
The seasons pass.
The man and woman meet again.
The dog finds itself between them.
The other is in one,
the one is in the other
and they are three.
The former husband shatters everything.
A second film begins:
the same as the first,
and yet not.
From the human race we pass to metaphor.
This ends in barking
and a baby’s cries.
In the meantime, we will have seen
people talking of the demise of the dollar,
of truth in mathematics
and of the death of a robin. [Synopsis courtesy of Cannes Film Festival]

Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to his dismay he discovered that revolution wasn’t imminent, and Pennebaker edited Godard’s material, to which he and Richard Leacock even added a bit more, releasing the result as One P.M., as in “one parallel movie.” It’s a stunning mixture of cinéma-vérité, political theater, and interviews of key sixties figures.